Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Mt. Biyan (Green Cliff)
Song Xu (Chinese, 1525-c. 1606)
c. 1588
- Medium
- Album leaf; ink and color on silk
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 26.4 x 28.4 cm (10 3/8 x 11 3/16 in.)
- Culture
- China, Jiaxing, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Chinese Art
- Credit line
- The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This album of landscape paintings depicts the famous scenic areas located in and around the city of Wuxing in southeastern China. These places were all known for their natural beauty, but in addition, a number were distinguished by their links to eminent historical figures and events. The artist, Song Xu, was not a native of Wuxing, but must have visited it when he accepted the commission, for he carefully depicted all eighteen views and wrote comments on each of them.
Song's gazetteer-like notation on this leaf reads: Green Cliff Mountain used to have a primeval forest, with a temple hidden within it. Now, those primeval forests have been wantonly and completely cut down. Consequently, with its devastated look, few travelers are coming. Still, with its peaks, cliffs, waterfall, there is no lack of scenic beauty.
